Kayla had dozed off twice during our planning session, her chin dipping toward her chest in that slow-motion surrender every college student learns before their first 8 AM midterm. When Erika finally took pity and dismissed her, the girl's zombie shuffle toward the exit hit a snag halfway through the doorway - her entire body convulsed by a yawn so apocalyptic I half-expected to see her tonsils wave a white flag.
Moments after Kayla's departure, Erika's hip erupted in a sound somewhere between a distressed Magnemite and a fax machine having an existential crisis. She produced what I first thought was a Pokédex that had spent quality time in a Fearow's nest—all scratched plastic and yellowed buttons worn smooth by years of frustrated gym leader prodding.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Mary's slight forward lean, the way her fingers twitched against the manila folder—a trainer's instinct to answer the call of battle. But Erika's next words froze that motion mid-twitch.
"Mary," Erika's voice held a gentle reminder rather than a rebuke. "You know you're still suspended until further notice." She paused, her next words carefully chosen. "Though I suspect solving our Oddish predicament might help your case with the board." She smiled a knowing smile. "Keep me updated—and Mary, make sure our young friend here doesn't get into any more restricted areas?"
The rhythmic clack of wooden geta against polished floors faded down the hallway, leaving behind the lingering scent of greenhouse flowers and the weight of Mary's unspoken frustration.
"Well," Mary said, attacking the printed photos with perhaps more vigor than necessary as she stuffed them into the manila folder. Her gaze drifted to one of the security monitors where trainers gathered for the afternoon's challenges, lingering just long enough to betray her longing. With visible effort, she dragged her attention back to our task. "Okay. Item shops."
\[^.^]/
The Celadon Department Store had been my first digital pilgrimage in every playthrough. Five floors of pixelated paradise where I'd bankrupt a thousand fictional selves for TMs and evolution stones. Now, standing before its real-world counterpart—all concrete and weathered signage instead of clean pixel art—I fought the absurd urge to check my nonexistent pockets for cheat codes.
The automatic doors hissed like a disapproving librarian, freezing me in the threshold. Air conditioning slapped my face, carrying the citrus tang of cleaning chemicals and something earthier beneath—crushed herbs? Burnt ozone? My nose twitched.
Through the glass, reality flickered between my memories of American malls—all sleek escalators and standardized displays—and this fever dream of retail. A Mr. Mime in pressed black slacks pantomimed a traffic director's role with Broadway flair, its invisible walls parting the human and Pokémon streams like Moses at the retail sea. A Delibird waddled past dragging a returns cart twice its size, tail-bag gaping like Santa's sack after a bender. Somewhere to my left, a child wailed about their Growlithe eating a Poké Doll.
"First time?" Mary asked, catching my wide-eyed stare at... everything. “Let’s just say you’re not the first farm kid I’ve seen go cross-eyed at the size. Locals go nose-blind to this circus by week two.”
"I've seen bigger," I muttered, immediately regretting the reflex comparison as we joined the elevator queue.
“Bigger than Celadon’s crown jewel?” Mary’s voice dripped with mock horror.
Ahead, a woman in a fur-trimmed coat that screamed 'old money' carried a Meowth in what looked to be an expensive designer bag. The Pokemon peered from its leather throne, gold coin glinting as it dragged a claw across its throat—directly at me. My stomach dropped. 'Does it know? Can it smell the dimensional stink on me, like some kind of cosmic TSA agent?'
The Meowth swiveled and repeated the gesture to a passing couple arguing over a map. The man yelped, fumbling the paper as his partner giggled.
Oh. It’s just an asshole.’ Relief flooded my veins like a cheap potion antidote.
I caught Mary's eyebrow creeping upward as she watched me. 'Think rural. Think boring. Think—'
"—It's okay," she cut in, merciful as a Chansey and twice as smug. "Not everyone can handle civilization."
Relief and irritation tangled in my chest—grateful for the easy escape from further questions, annoyed at being dismissed as some backwater yokel. Though to be fair, before the whole interdimensional bus incident, my biggest retail experiences had only been during vacations.
The elevator dinged, brass gates parting to reveal a Machop in pressed bellhop whites, its hands poised over an ornate lever where simple buttons should have been.
"Fifth floor," Mary said with practiced politeness, then added for my benefit, "Vitamins, along with HP UP, are up there, between 'Celadon Couture' and 'Trainer's Trophy Room.'"
The fur-coat woman barely glanced at the Machop, rings glinting like a chandelier in a mausoleum as she declared: "Four."
We settled into that universal elevator silence. The Machop's reflection flickered between focus and quiet despair as it guided us upward, while the Meowth maintained unblinking eye contact with me through the mirrored walls.
Clunk. Fourth floor. The Machop wrestled the cab into alignment, sweat beading on its brow. Fur-coat swept out, her Meowth pausing for one final throat-slitting gesture before the doors closed on its smug whisker-twitch.
The final ascent felt lighter in both weight and existential elevator dread. Even the Machop relaxed, claws tapping a jaunty rhythm against brass.
The elevator deposited us into what my brain insisted on categorizing as 'Pokémon Nordstrom meets REI'. Racks of performance wear stretched into the distance—moisture-wicking fabrics in every shade of 'serious trainer', interspersed with displays of what looked suspiciously like designer battle accessories. A Furret in a staff vest methodically reorganized a tower of folded quick-dry shirts, its long body wrapping around the display like a living level.
"Battle Collection's in the back," Mary said, navigating us through the fashion maze.
The atmosphere shifted as we crossed some invisible retail border. The hum of browsing shoppers faded, replaced by the quiet reverence of serious spending. Evolution stones glowed like captured sunsets behind reinforced glass, while rows of technical machines pulsed with contained power. The vitamin display commanded its own alcove, arranged with the precision of a museum exhibit.
"Good morning," Mary approached the counter, her gym uniform transforming this from shopping trip to official inquiry. "Could you tell us about your current stock of vitamins?"
While Mary handled the official inquiry, I drifted toward the vitamin displays like a moth to particularly expensive flames. The bottles stood in perfect formation, their certification seals catching the light—and their price tags catching my breath. ₽9,800 or $98 for a single small HP UP bottle of vitamins. The larger ones... I did some quick mental math and decided I didn't need that kind of existential crisis today.
Each HP UP bore Celadon's Rainbow Badge seal like a designer logo, their green caps marking them as distinctly as a Gucci pattern. CALCIUM and IRON shared Pewter's Boulder Badge with their orange and yellow caps, carrying similarly painful price tags. PROTEIN, ZINC, and CARBOS bore unfamiliar badges I'd never seen rendered in pixel form, but their prices suggested they came from equally prestigious gyms.
It was surreal seeing them as actual products instead of menu items. No simple "+1 to stats" here—just rows of identical bottles with gym seals and colored caps, not a single ingredient list or warning label in sight. The lack of fine print was almost unsettling after a lifetime of pharmaceutical novels compressed onto tiny bottles. I caught myself wondering if they'd work on humans before my brain helpfully reminded me that drinking mystery Pokemon supplements was probably a fantastic way to discover exactly why they kept those formulations secret—assuming I survived the experiment.
"—sourced exclusively from Celadon Gym, of course," the clerk's voice filtered back into focus. "Regular shipments twice a week, fully stocked at present."
Mary nodded. "And you haven't noticed anything unusual about supply or demand recently? Any new vendors trying to sell similar products?"
"No, everything's been quite normal." The clerk responded with a tilted head.
"Anything unusual about HP UP in particular?" Mary pressed, her voice carefully casual.
The clerk adjusted her glasses, the pause stretching just long enough to be interesting. "Well... had someone asking questions last week. Young girl, kind of sickly-looking. Wanted to know if there was a cheaper option." She turned back to her ledger with the practiced disinterest of retail nobility. "I told her what everyone gets told—Celadon Gym keeps their secrets. Not my job to explain why."
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"Did she mention why she was asking?" Mary's tone stayed light, but I caught the predatory focus underneath—like a Meowth pretending it wasn't stalking a Pidgey.
"Didn't care enough to ask." The clerk's pen scratched against paper with quiet finality. "She wasn't exactly waving around ₽10,000 per bottle money, if you catch my meaning. Why? Something happen?"
Mary shook her head. "Just following up on some inquiries. Please let the gym know if any new HP UP formulas come to market. Thank you for your time."
We drifted away from the counter, past those rows of mysterious bottles with their pristine Rainbow Badge seals. Each one probably contained enough carefully guarded secrets to give a pharmaceutical chemist a lifetime of dreams—or nightmares.
The complete lack of ingredient lists or warning labels made me wonder if there even was a Pokemon-world FDA, or if gym leaders just sat around in secret meetings deciding which concoctions to bless with their badges.
'Please consult your local gym leader if side effects include spontaneous evolution...'
"Strange to ask about formulas openly if they were planning something," Mary muttered, more to herself than me. "Unless that was meant to be a distraction..."
“Something’s not quite adding up…” I muttered under my breath.
Mary caught my words and nodded slowly. "Yeah... this feels off." She gestured across the floor. "There's an herbal medicine shop over there as well. If someone's trying to recreate HP UP, they might've been asking questions there too."
-[?.?]-
The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly as we trudged out of our eighth—or was it ninth?—shop. My hands trembled slightly, and not just from exhaustion. Mary shot me another worried glance.
"I told you the coffee was a bad idea," she muttered, steadying me as I practically bounced off a street sign. Earlier, she'd tried to convince me to stick with juice, but I'd insisted I could handle it. After all, I'd been a coffee addict in my past life.
Unfortunately, my current body seemed to have very different opinions about caffeine. Every color felt too bright, every sound too sharp, and my thoughts raced faster than a Quick Attack.
"I'm fine!" I chirped, then immediately proved myself wrong by walking into a potted plant. "Totally fine. Super fine. Never been better. Did you know your hair looks like spaghetti when it moves? Wait, no, focus. Oddish. We're looking for Oddish."
Four more shops in the department store and two specialty herbalists later, the coffee had finally worn off enough for coherent thought. Each stop had added another piece to our puzzle: a desperate-looking girl, red-rimmed eyes, asking questions about HP UP production. The pattern was clear, but it led nowhere.
"That's most of the major item shops and herbalists in the shopping district," Mary said, studying a paper map that looked like it had survived several wars with various beverage spills. She traced a finger along a series of narrow lines, then frowned. "Same girl at all of them… There's a few more places that we should check behind the Game Corner, but..." She glanced at me with the kind of worried look adults always seemed to default to around children. "Maybe I should check those alone."
Internally, I wrestled with the urge to explain that I wasn't actually an ten-year-old who needed protecting. But explaining that would involve a story about reincarnation-via-truck that even I still had trouble believing. Instead, I just asked, "Because I look like a kid?"
"It's not exactly the safest area," Mary said diplomatically, which I translated as 'Yes, exactly because you're a kid.' "The Game Corner district tends to attract a... different crowd."
I tried not to visibly react to the mention of the Game Corner. In the games, it had always been Team Rocket's not-so-secret base of operations, complete with a hidden switch behind a poster. The reality was probably less cartoonishly villainous, but my caffeine-addled brain couldn't help conjuring images of shifty-eyed grunts and convenient trap doors. "I'll be careful. Besides, Ditto's with us."
Mary's frown deepened. "That's exactly what worries me. A child with a rare Pokémon walking into..." She shook her head. "Look, there are people there who might get... interested in a Ditto. I just don't want to endanger you." Her eyes darted to the minimized Pokeball in my hand, then back to me. "Even with my Bellsprout, it's not somewhere I should be taking someone your age."
The caffeine buzz in my system chose that moment to send another wave of jitters through my limbs. I tried passing it off as childish eagerness, bouncing on my toes while my thoughts raced in circles. Here I was, getting the 'you're too young' speech from someone who was younger than I'd been when I... when truck-kun had sent me here. The irony would have been hilarious if it wasn't so frustrating.
"If you leave me here, I'll probably just follow you anyway." The words came out before I could stop them, riding that wave of coffee-fueled impulse. Not my most sophisticated argument, but it had the benefit of being true. Between the caffeine making me too wired to sit still and the mystery making me too invested to back down, there was no way I was staying put.
Mary stared at me for a long moment, the kind of stare that made me wonder if she'd developed mind-reading abilities. Finally, she pinched the bridge of her nose. "You're not going to make this easy, are you?"
I tried to look innocent, which was probably undermined by another caffeine-induced bounce.
"Fine," she said, in the tone of someone already regretting their decision. "But you stay next to me the entire time. No wandering off, no talking to strangers.”
I nodded with what I hoped was appropriate childlike solemnity, though the next coffee-fueled bounce probably ruined the effect. Mary's rules were reasonable, very reasonable; something I would've done regardless.
The casino district turned out to be an assault on the senses that made my coffee jitters feel right at home. Neon competed with the afternoon sun in layers of electric poetry. "LIVE POKEMON SHOWS!" "WORLD-FAMOUS DANCERS!" "FORTUNE AWAITS!" Signs crawled up buildings like luminous vines, each promising something more spectacular than the last.
The wide boulevards pulsed with energy as promoters in flashy uniforms tried to lure people into their establishments, their practiced pitches mixing with the electronic chimes of countless games and machines spilling from the open doors of the Game Corner. "Free drinks for trainers!" "Best odds in Kanto!" "Pokemon dance review starts in twenty minutes!"
Meowth patrolled in pairs, coins gleaming like badges as they wove between the legs of the crowd, keeping a watchful eye for troublemakers while adding to the district's aura of prosperity.
Trainers stumbled with glassy-eyed determination between the Game Corner and the pawn shops, their pockets lighter with each trip but their dreams of hitting the jackpot growing heavier. Some clutched Meowth-shaped tokens or muttered slot combinations under their breath like mantras, caught in the endless cycle of "just one more spin."
"Watch your step," Mary warned as we navigated around a Grimer that had made itself comfortable in the middle of the street, seemingly unbothered by the constant flow of foot traffic splitting around it like a stream. "And try not to stare at anyone too long."
I nodded, fighting the urge to bounce on my toes. The coffee might have worn off enough for coherent thought, but my body still hummed with excess energy. Every storefront seemed to hold another wonder, every alley another mystery. The reality of being a child-sized caffeinated detective was significantly more electrifying than I'd anticipated.
Shop number twelve looked like it had been squeezed between its neighbors as an afterthought. Before Mary could reach for the door, voices drifted through the thin walls.
"—can't believe you actually did it," the man's voice, somewhere between awe and horror. "You actually stole a pokemon from the gym?"
"You said Oddish was the key ingredient," a girl's voice, followed by a sneeze and a huge sniffle, "That if I had the gym’s Oddish’s spores he might—"
"Yeah, it is. But its not like I know how to make HP UP. I’m not an apothecary, I’m a shopkeeper. I just sell the stuff. You know you're gonna get years in prison. And for what? You should’ve worked up and saved the money to buy it. Hell, even stealing HP UP directly would’ve—"
Another sneeze interrupted him. "Please. My brother, he's—"
Before I could process what was happening, Mary shouldered past me and threw open the shop door. The bell's discordant chime made both occupants jump. My heart did a caffeine-enhanced somersault as I stumbled in after her.
The shop was doing brisk business, exactly what you'd expect from a place near the Game Corner. Glass cases displayed genuine TMs at tourist-trap prices, while shelves held rows of properly labeled potions and supplements. The whole place smelled like artificial berry scent, probably pumped through the ventilation system just like the casinos did with their signature fragrances.
For one frozen moment, we all stared at each other. Then the girl's eyes darted to the curtained back room, the shopkeeper's face went from nervous to terrified, and my caffeine-addled brain helpfully supplied that this was about to become a very different kind of afternoon.
The girl bolted for the curtained doorway, golden spores trailing in her wake like some sort of sparkly breadcrumb trail. My coffee-addled brain helpfully supplied that this would be the part of a game where dramatic pursuit music would kick in. Reality was less orchestrated but way more chaotic—though being small finally had its advantages.
While Mary got tangled up with a precariously balanced display of evolution stones, I slipped through the narrow spaces between shelves like a Rattata in a maze. The back room opened into an alley that definitely wasn't on any official map of Celadon, real or game.
My legs pumped faster than they ever had in this small body, but physics was physics—the girl ahead might have been wheezing and sneezing with every step, spores glittering in her wake like some twisted version of Tinker Bell, but she still had twice my stride length. Each time I thought I was gaining ground, another sneeze would propel her forward in a panic, leaving me chasing golden sparkles and crushing realizations about the limitations of being child-sized.
In a moment of gaming-logic brilliance that reality promptly crushed, I fumbled for Ditto's ball. "Get her!"
Ditto materialized in a flash of red light, and for a split second, I felt like a proper trainer.
Then Ditto bounced forward in what I generously assumed was meant to be a Tackle, only to hit the cobblestones with all the impact of a thrown marshmallow. The girl didn't even break stride—just sneezed again and rounded another corner, leaving Ditto and me to share a moment of profound disappointment in our battle debut.
Then Mary's voice rang out behind me. "Bellsprout, trip her up!"
“Bell!” A flash of green shot past me as Bellsprout's vine coiled around the girl's ankle with elegant precision. She went down in a tangle of limbs and sneezes, the cloth bag tumbling from her grasp. Golden spores drifted through the air like pixelated status effects come to life.
"No!" she cried, face pressed against the cobblestones.
Mary knelt beside the girl, her voice gentle but firm. "Oddish. Where is it?"
The girl's response came in a rush of tears and panic, snot mixing with the golden spores still clinging to her face. "Please don't send me to jail! Please! My brother needs me! He'll die if I don't help him!"